The Monrovia Rotary Club is pleased to announce that Sandy Burud, Ph.D. will be the featured speaker at the regular meeting of the club on Tuesday, January 19th at noon.

Sandy  is the Co-Project Director of the Monrovia Legacy Project. She is a writer and certified graphic designer who recently turned her talents to researching and documenting personal histories. Last year she produced a series of family history books for Betty Sandford, helped her write a memoir of her 88 years in Monrovia, and organized her life’s worth of papers.  Prior to that Dr. Burud was a researcher, writer and project manager.  She is a former Visiting Scholar at Claremont Graduate University’s Schools of Management and of Educational Studies. She has co-authored two noteworthy books – the Human Resource Academy’s ‘Outstanding Book of the Year 2004’ — and in 1984 the first book on employer-supported child care, which sparked that trend. Following the early book, she established a boutique consulting practice that designed and/or operated work-site child care facilities for Disney, Universal, Mattel, Apple, PG&E and others. She was later Chief Strategy Officer for a company that produced flexible work software and lead projects for the Dept. of Defense, Procter & Gamble, American Express, and John Deere.  She has received grants from the U.S. Dept. of Health & Human Services, David & Lucile Packard Foundation, and the Women’s Bureau.  She is Past President of the Alliance for Work-Life Professionals, a professional association for the work-life balance field. She has lived in Monrovia for twenty years and followed Monrovia’s evolution closely since her uncle, Bob Wilcox, was Executive Manager of Monrovia’s Chamber of Commerce in the early 1970’s. She holds an M.A. from Pacific Oaks College in Human Development and a Ph.D. in Education from Claremont Graduate University, where she serves on the Board of Visitors.

The Monrovia Rotary Club is pleased to welcome Dr. Katherine Thorossian to speak to the club on Tuesday, January 12th at noon.

Dr. Thorossian is the Superintendent of Schools in the Monrovia Unified School District.   Her 30 years of experience in education includes serving as Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services in the Glendale Unified School District;

Principal of Glendale High School;  and  Grade Level Coordinator, then Assistant Principal of Diamond Bar High School.

Dr. Thorossian began her career as a high school English teacher in Diamond Bar.  She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in English from the University California at Los Angeles, her teaching credential and Masters of Science Degree in Counseling with an Option in Administration from California State University, Los Angeles and her Doctor of Education Degree from the University of Southern California where she researched factors aggravating or mitigating the achievement gap. 

The Monrovia Rotary Club welcomes guest to its meetings. The lunch cost is $16.00 and there is an e-mail link to RSVP on the right column of the club website: www.monroviarotary.org

The Monrovia Rotary Club is excited to welcome Chef Alexander Reyes as its speaker for January 5th, 2016.  To visit the club and hear Chef Reyes speak please click on the RSVP link in the contact box on the club website.  More about Chef Alex from the Saute Culinary Academy website:

A passion for food and a love of service inclined Chef Alex Reyes to pursue a career as a professional Chef. Having an interest in all aspects of the hospitality and restaurant industry influenced Chef Reyes to surrender to his passion of cooking.

As a graduate of the world famous Le Cordon Bleu, College of Culinary Arts, Chef Reyes has over 23 years of experience in the restaurant business. Chef Reyes has found a home as an instructor at Saute and conveys enthusiasm for teaching and a passion for the food industry.

After spending 7 years as a full time Lead Chef Instructor at Le Cordon Bleu, Chef Reyes seeks to stimulate his students and challenges them to take Culinary Arts to its highest level, by working hard, developing a strong foundation in culinary techniques and helping them visualize and manifest sound careers as future Chefs.

With an open mind and love of all foods and people from around the world, Chef Reyes specializes in foods from the Caribbean, using French techniques as the foundation of all cooking.  

The Monrovia Rotary Club is pleased to welcome Camrin Christensen as the speaker at our regular meeting on Tuesday, December 22 at noon at the Monrovian Restaurant.

Camrin  joined CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates for Children) of Los Angeles as Director of Volunteer Recruitment and Outreach in January 2015.  She is heading up the organization’s efforts to triple the number of volunteers serving as court appointed special advocates for children in foster care.  Part of this role includes developing partnerships with community groups, in order to increase awareness of the opportunity to become a court appointed special advocate for one of the 30,000 children in the dependency system in LA County.  She looks forward to sharing information about the work of the organization and the role of the volunteer advocates in the lives of the foster children they work with.

Prior to joining CASA, Camrin worked for an Orange County based non-profit focused on providing at-risk youth with social and educational opportunities during after-school time.  She also worked at the UC Irvine Department of Education, recruiting and monitoring undergraduate volunteers in after school service learning placements.  Camrin Christensen has held management positions at Eurasia Partnership Foundation, an organization focused on promoting civic engagement in the South Caucasus.  She also worked to eliminate corruption through increasing public access to information and facilitating citizen engagement in good governance.  Camrin has an MA in International Affairs from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a BA from Wellesley College.  She was a Fulbright Scholar (Tbilisi, Georgia) andRotary Ambassadorial Scholar (Irkutsk, Russia) and is multilingual in Spanish, Russian and Georgian.

More information about CASA of Los Angeles can be found at: www.casala.org

The Monrovia Rotary Club is pleased to welcome April Kelcy to speak at the regular club meeting of Tuesday December 8th, 2015.

April is an award-winning emergency management consultant who helps clients to achieve intelligent and practical preparation for major disasters.  This includes positioning them for more effective response to life threatening incidents, and for faster economic recovery. 

She is a consultant to the Earthquake Country Alliance and serves as a state-wide leader for the Great ShakeOut project.   She has been featured in print, radio and television coverage, most recently in a live interview on KNX-1070.

With over three decades of advocacy in this field, April’s work has resulted in actual saves of lives, businesses and homes in past disasters.